


Supernova

by AzureNight



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Bittersweet Ending, Gen, Nothing about this is happy, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-07
Updated: 2019-07-07
Packaged: 2020-06-24 06:54:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19718482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AzureNight/pseuds/AzureNight
Summary: Wherein the snap decimated all the Avengers-[But Tony's life was spared because Strange had made a dealAnd Wanda Maximoff always bordered more on villainy than heroism.]-but the world still needs to be saved.





	1. Supernova

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by @tonystarktogo on tumblr, the idea for this au was their's in the first place and I take no credit for it!

There’s a moment where everything goes quiet and the dust settles, and Tony knows there’s no way out of this. He’s alone on Titan, his companions _~~(his son)~~_ dead, and no obvious way of getting home.

Tony scavenges through the remains of the planet, and finds a ship, and it doesn’t work, exactly, the engine is bust, but its cockpit is ok, and he can work with that, he’d found a different ship with its cockpit torn off entirely but a salvageable engine, and the ship they’d crash landed on this planet has some tools.

Food is harder to come by, of course, but he’s not called a genius for nothing, contrary to what many believe, and he manages to figure out what plants he can eat, and what plants he can eat but shouldn’t at the risk of death (or electrocution, funnily enough. Odd plant, that one was. It was a nice addition to his toolkit, though).

There’s a crumbling map in a crumbled building. It’s the only one he has, and he suspects it’s outdated, but there’s the tiniest representation of the solar system he hails from, just a few systems over. Not even a light year away.

So he dares to hope.

_(He builds himself a ship from scrap metal and tries to ignore how Titan’s sun burns him and doesn’t bother to muffle his screams when he dreams of a different prison._

_There is no pool of water here deep enough for it to be that place, and his throat is always parched.)_

He arrives on earth three years later tasting sand and heat and metal, with broken armour and a new language in his mind. Friday does not greet him when he enters the compound. _(Friday does not greet him at all.)_

_(Thanos was not a fool; Tony Stark, his army had whispered, could talk to machines, could create **life** in a way no one else in the universe could. Thanos was not a fool; he had found the life Tony Stark had created and snuffed it out.)_

Rhodey is gone; as is Pepper; as is Happy; Harley: May; Helen; Bruce. Vision isn’t dust but seeing his body - desecrated, pillaged for its vibranium content in a world that had no laws now that the law-makers were half-dead - hurt more. Dum-E still exists. So does U, and Butterfingers.

But when he boots them up they’re devoid of code, empty husks, and he sobs silently and without tears over the corpses of his three eldest children and hides them safely and doesn’t look back.

_(Random elimination, Tony thinks bitterly and without tears, never tears (he’s long since learned not to cry, lest he waste precious water). Random elimination unless it’s **him**._

_Thanos had known his name. It wasn’t unlikely he had known a lot more about Tony than just that.)_

The Avengers are gone too, but he doesn’t notice that until a while later. It’s been a long time since they were the first thing on his mind.

Wanda’s there, though.

He thinks that’s the thing that hurts the most; everyone he’s ever loved is dead and gone, without even a body to bury, but Wanda is still there as the only remaining Avenger and she’s in his compound and he still wakes up at night with Ultron and red and yellow and a lost cry of _“Jarvis!”_ on his tongue.

She’s tired. She’s tired and broken and she’s lost people too and when he looks at her Tony sees too much of himself so he shuts himself away and doesn’t think about it.

It was one thing to have her on the team when she’d hurt him and didn’t care. It’s another to be facing her in a silent compound when she and he were so alike because _why should she get to be like that after all she did to **me?**_

_(It’s his ego speaking again, he realises, Natasha was right. **Natasha was right.** That stings too.)_

“Stark,” she says, and it’s not a greeting and it’s not an apology but it’s an olive branch. “Welcome home.”

_(Welcome to the earth, she doesn’t say, which was all too happy to pick at your weak spots and stab you in the back, which was all too happy to ignore the philanthropy and the kindness and the hero work._

_Welcome back to America, that loved you for winning their wars with your weapons and hated you for the same reason, that could never see you as a hero because you weren’t in red and blue and white and you were a laser that obliterated before the enemy reached and not a shield._

_Welcome back to the compound._

_He hears it all anyway.)_

“Maximoff,” he says, and it’s not a greeting and it’s not accepting an apology ungiven, but he reaches for the olive branch nonetheless. “It’s good to be back.”

His voice is quieter now. He doesn’t talk much, either, and will only whisper unless Maximoff prompts him to be louder. His footsteps are light too. Maximoff likes music, though, and it helps. Titan was quiet. Music helps.

There’s no fanfare to declare his arrival to earth, and he knows that some people think he’s dead.

_(He and Maximoff visit the memorial stones, once. His name is there, engraved neatly next to Pepper’s. They don’t stay long._

_They stay long enough for someone to look at Tony, who wears no disguise and no mask, and tell him that he reminds them of Tony Stark, and he wonders (egotistically, always centred on himself, unable to comprehend a life not revolving around himself) when it was that people started forgetting his face. Maximoff says they haven’t._

_Maximoff says he’s different._

_She’s not wrong.)_

They spend months doing nothing as he heals. His fortune was considered Avenger’s money, and it’s how Maximoff ate and paid the measly bills to keep her small part of the compound running, and it’s how they eat and pay the measly bills to keep their small parts of the compound running.

Just a kitchen, small, everything is small now, that they share, and two rooms on the same corridor that connects to the kitchen. A lab, too, also on the same corridor, and a training room. The training room fits a few mats and a punching bag, the lab fits four benches empty when Tony opens it. Maximoff helps him move the heavier equipment from his lab underground, helps him install a security system, helps him when he can’t remember how to read the manuals on what some pieces of obscure equipment do.

He learnt a new language on Titan, but he started forgetting his old one.

“Do you forgive me for the bomb?” Tony asks

“If a man shot me with a Winchester rifle, you wouldn’t kill the manufacturers.”

There is silence for a second, but Maximoff is quick to fill it, and Tony is starting to believe that it’s for his benefit more than anything. “I’m sorry.”

The words ring in his head for a while and Maximoff turns the music up a little higher when he doesn’t respond, but otherwise doesn’t do anything but leave.

He spends the night on a binge and Wanda brings him hot chocolate the next morning at five am and tells him to go to sleep.

The anniversary of the snap has them both drunk on old whiskey that Tony had once bought to celebrate Harley’s eighteenth’s birthday one day, aged beautifully.

“Time travel,” Wanda says, with a bubbly grin on her face. “We can… we can time travel and get th’ stones and, and, and, and we can _snap_ and then we can see ‘em again.”

“Yes,” Tony agrees solemnly, nodding almost comically, in contrast to his tone, “time travel. To the lab.”

They wake with a Mobius strip simulation running and illegally-made Pym particles scattered around them like confetti.

_(“We can’t actually - can we?” Tony asks, looking at the hologram. There’s a hint of fear, of uncertainty, of that **hope** he once had on a desert planet when he found an old map in a crumbling building. “Can we?”_

_Wanda’s eyes are wide and cautious and filled with a terrified sort of hope. “Who would stop us?”)_

Their test-run has Wanda steal Tony’s phone back in twenty fourteen. She comes back with a working StarkPhone and Tony hold his breath as he turns it on.

_(“Hello, Sir,” rings through the speakers of the lab. Tony’s knees shake and he collapses and the phone falls to the floor and would have shattered had Wanda not encapsulated it in red mist. “The date is the ninth of February, twenty-twenty two, and the current time is two fifty-nine am. I appear to have missed a few things.”_

_It is the first time he cries since coming back.)_

He hasn’t taken out the suit in a while, and Jarvis is unused to co-piloting a nanite-based suit, and Wanda’s powers have gone an age without being used offensively, and they’re a rusty team. But they make it work. _(It has to work.)_

“First jump,” Tony whispers, Jarvis in his ear and Wanda to his right, “for the time stone. New York Sanctum, twenty sixteen.”

“Last chance to back out,” Wanda says, louder than Tony, with an element of teasing to her voice and determination set into her stance and her being. Neither of them are backing out now.

It’s an easy job. They watch Strange play with an apple, watch Wong tell him off, and nab the stone. It calls to Wanda, recognising echoes of the mind stone within her, it lets itself be taken, and they have the first of six stones that they can only hope will stand up against the stones Thanos has in his possession.

“Second jump,” Tony whispers, Wanda in front of him and Jarvis running furious scans on a prototype gauntlet behind him, “for the space and stones. New York, twenty twelve.”

Space first, they decide. It’s in a briefcase, conspicuous and easy to spot, and all it takes to get it is a suit and a faint illusion over their faces, posing as businessman and businesswoman, an accidental collision, and sleight of hand.

The mind stone is even easier to obtain with the ability to teleport.

“Third jump,” Tony whispers, Wanda circling the gauntlet and Jarvis warning her that they were jumping soon, “for the reality stone. England, twenty twelve.”

Jane is easy to catch, illusions again - two children, budding scientists, fascinated by her work, and then it’s only a matter of extracting the reality stone while she’s knocked unconscious, then disappearing.

It’s all going rather too well, Tony thinks. Of course, they hit a snag; they’ve only known the power and soul stones once, when Thanos wielded them in battle.

“What now?”

They have four stones and a prototype gauntlet, a witch and a genius and an AI.

They spend three weeks searching desperately for an answer and coming up blank. The stones were somewhere in space, of course, but it could take a lifetime of searching to find the planets where they were, and the infinity of the universe made it an impossible task.

They spent more time in the lab than ever before.

Wanda was by the gauntlet, almost always. Tony stayed as far away as he could.

It was Jarvis who has the breakthrough.

“Miss,” he says, quickly, having a moment of clarity for the first time in three weeks, “you’re attracted to the stones. I suspect that the answer to our problems may simply be to follow this connection.”

“Fourth jump,” Tony whispers, Jarvis humming satisfied and Wanda impatient, “for the power and soul stones.”

He takes a shaky breath, and says louder, “final jump.”

_(Wanda hopes against all hope that he’s right. She’s not sure what she’ll do if they fail.)_

They spend three months tracking the power stone in a game of hot and cold that they desperately wish with bear fruit. It’s only a hunch, after all, that this will work at all.

Three months, and slow progress, and they find a temple where the stone is stored in a forcefield.

“Flimsy,” Tony says, voice echoing louder then it is in the room. “They had better forcefields on Titan.”

“Let’s find the soul stone. Maybe there’ll be a better forcefield there.”

The power stone amplifies Wanda’s powers beyond anything she could have dreamed of and she makes stars go supernova in her excitement, red flying all around.

Tony grins and watches the light show and goes to sleep with it still in his mind.

_(Once upon a time, he knows, it would have terrified him, Wanda terrified him, her power terrified him, and now he watches her makes stars go supernova with barely unrestrained glee as Jarvis logs all the data for future use._

_Because they have a future._

_Because they’re making for **everyone** a future.)_

Red Skull greets them on an orange planet covered in water and Tony should have known it would never be that easy.

“You must give up what you love the most,” he tells them, and Wanda has turmoil in her eyes because she won’t push him and he won’t push her and they’ve fought _so hard to live, neither want to die_.

“Sir,” Jarvis chimes from the helmet. Wanda narrows her eyes and Tony stops breathing. 

“No.” It’s Wanda who says it, after a beat, because Tony who’d always been terrible with words after Titan has lost the ability to speak entirely. 

_(Not Jarvis, not again, please **not** **Jarvis**_ -)

“My time was long passed, Sir.” Jarvis’ voice is gentle but firm, and ever so soft and ever so loving. “I’m only a copy of the twenty fourteen Jarvis, in the end.”

“No,” Tony whispers hoarsely and his throat feels parched. “No.”

“Sir, please.”

“No - no god Jarvis I lost you once and it almost destroyed me I can’t- _I can’t lose you again_.” And oh, his eyes are glistening, crystal water gathering in their corners and falling gently, and Wanda can hear them dripping, softly, against the floor, but Tony hears only waves and storms inside his mind.

“You are stronger than you think, Sir.”

“I won’t do it.”

“Miss.”

_(Tony doesn’t understand why Jarvis calls for Wanda. Wanda’s most cherished thing has always been her own life, and though she cares for the AI if she was the one to destroy him, nothing would happen._

_Tony doesn’t understand why Jarvis calls for Wanda, at first. And then “I’m sorry,” she says, and red mist gathers at her fingertips and he remembers fear and he remembers why he was so very **terrified of** Scarlet Witch._

_“Wanda please, Wanda please, **don’t, you can’t,** **DON’T DO THIS TO ME!** ”  
_

_It’s the first time he’s shouted since Titan. Wanda’s not surprised that it was Jarvis who let him shout again, when Jarvis let him cry again, and she knows that she’s crying too as she sends the red mist towards Tony_ _._

_“I love you, Father.”  
_

_“I’m sorry,” she repeats. The words ring hollow.)_

They have six stones and a revised gauntlet, a witch and a genius _~~(but no AI)~~_.

Bring back everyone Thanos killed, and kill Thanos, all with a single snap. It’s a simple plan in theory. It’s a simple plan in practice.

Tony’s will is detailed. She was included in it, before the orange planet and the soul stone and _Jarvis_ (and it _hurts_ to think of him and she will hate herself for what she did to him every day).

He hasn’t spoken a word to her since then. He only signs. Wanda doesn’t know if it’s because he can’t bring himself to speak to _her_ , or if he can’t bring himself to speak _at all_.

And then it’s time and Tony snaps his fingers and she holds him as he dies.

_(He’s not crying. She thinks it might have hurt less if he was.)_


	2. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After it all.

“Maximoff,” Rhodes says, gruff and uncertain. They haven’t spoken since she asked to go to Tony’s funeral and he’d forbidden her from attending. She doesn’t blame him; even now she doesn’t understand how Tony forgave her for everything she did to him.

“Colonel Rhodes,” Wanda returns. She cares nothing for him, but Tony loved him and it counts for something. “Is there a reason for your visit?”

Her apartment is small and cramped, in downtown Brooklyn, the only thing she could afford after they kicked her from the compound and stopped her from using Tony’s money as she’d been doing for so long, and he’s not here for a social call.

(Everything was small, back in the compound, with the corridor and the kitchen and the two bedrooms and the lab and the training room. She’s used to it. The radio is always on in her apartment, even though she doesn’t speak much anymore.)

“They’re reading Tony’s will.” Oh. “You need to be present.”

She hadn’t expected that.

She gets in the car with him; it’s a nice car, an old car, Tony’s favourite. She knows, because he taught her how to drive in it.

The will goes as expected.

A lot of philanthropy, a dual heirship between Peter Parker and Harley Keener of Stark Industries once they’re eighteen respectively, an armour and Friday for Potts, an armour for Rhodes, a small fortune to almost all in attendance, and a specially recorded message for them.

She’s the last one in the will.

“Wanda Maximoff. I leave you a pre-recorded message, a Winchester rifle, and three hundred dollars,” the executor drones out, and hands her a briefcase with the items in it and a tear slips down her face.

She goes home, opens the briefcase, and swallows around the lump in her throat. The rifle she puts aside. She’ll have it mounted on the wall, later. The money she partitions out into food, bills, and rent.

The message isn’t on an Iron Man helmet, like everyone else’s was. It’s on a twenty fourteen edition StarkPhone with an acid red case.

It takes her three days to unlock the phone. The password is the same as ever, but her hand trembles as she inputs it.

There’s only one app, left, and it shows the phone background off well. She doesn’t remember when it was taken but they were both drunk, and smiling, with Jarvis’ infrastructure of code just visible in the background. Same as it was before the final jump.

She clicks the app, and text starts scrolling, and an audio message plays.

_“Hi, Wanda. Guess I’m dead.”_

An ugly sob threatens to tear out of her but she forces herself to listen - his voice is so _quiet_ , and how she remembers it to be, tired and kind but she can hear the little bit of resentment in it that tells her it was taken after Jarvis died.

_“I don’t hate you. I want to, I really want to, but I don’t hate you. Don’t… don’t spend your life wondering if I do. If I hated you I wouldn’t have left you a message._

_“I don’t know what I should tell you. I don’t know what I want you to know, really. You scared me - you terrified me. But you already knew that._

_“Just…”  
_

There was a pause, and he sighed, tired and conflicted but still kind.

_“When we were in space, just after we got the power stone… your power was beautiful. Your power is beautiful. I know I’m dead and I can’t ask you for anything, really, but could you try and make your power beautiful like that again? It doesn’t have to be for me._

_“Do it for Rogers or for yourself or for a random kid you saw on the street who looked sad, but…”  
_

Another sigh, this one defeated.

_“Sorry. This is dumb. Just don’t waste your life being sad over me. We saw 3000 planets and stars and… thank you. For being there. For not hating me. I don’t know anymore._

_“But thank you Wanda. Don’t come joining me too soon. Make something beautiful.”  
_

She doesn’t cry. She doesn’t feel anything, for the rest of the day.

In the late evening she goes out, locks the three locks on her door and goes to the local park that’s ridden with mosquitoes and drugs, at this time of night. Walks, breathes, sits down on a bench and still doesn’t cry.

The sky is dark, inky black and so unlike space which was always decorated with stars, some close some far, but there’s pollution down here and the clouds block the stars or even the moon from showing.

_“Make something beautiful.”_

Her palms are glowing red. She could do anything with this, she knows. She could level the trees in front of her or manipulate the water at her back, or connect to every mind and make them throw away their drugs and alcohol and cigarettes.

Instead she gathers the mist. It swirls into a ball and then not quite a ball, and it moves like a star does, a miniature star, and she puts it aside to make two, three, four, five stars that spin lazily around her with no purpose or direction.

And she sends them skywards and remembers making the real stars go supernova and they erupt into galaxies and nebulae tainted red, and there are fireworks that night in the park.

_“Make something beautiful.”_

It’s a start.


End file.
